Page 13 of Pain

It wasn’t much. Basically a large piece of unfinished wood laid across some old bookshelves that I hadn’t been using. The office itself was barely the size of a closet and had probably been meant as a storage room rather than a place where important decisions were made. But it was quiet and removed from the more public areas, and sometimes that was all that counted.

Sometimes the most valuable part about it was that it gave me a quiet, private place to muscle through the tricky mental gymnastics it took to run a club. And that was what I was using it for right now.

I slammed the laptop shut and shoved the paperwork to the side of the desk, then brought my forehead down hard on the surface of the desk.

“Think, Curtis, think,” I muttered to myself.

Like telling myself to think was going to help me somehow do it better or more rationally than I already was. If that was true, I should have started doing it a long time ago.

At least before I brought Saraya Post into my home.

I sat up, suddenly needing some action, and pulled a pad of paper toward me. A quick search of the drawer—and then another drawer, and then another—told me that I didn’t have a pen in the so-called organizational system that sat on top of the desk.

Dammit.

I got up, stalked out to the bar, and grabbed the first writing utensil I found. A bright pink highlighter.

It wasn’t manly. It would probably be insanely hard to read. But it was going to give me what I needed: an ability to write my thoughts down.

I was hoping that would help me make sense of the ideas currently rushing through my head in a fucking tornado of sound and emotion.

I had a very big problem, and her name was Saraya. I had another big problem by the name of Devil. Sitting and thinking about it hadn’t done me any good up to this point.

So I was going to start writing my thoughts down instead. Maybe once I saw them written, I could force them into some sort of decision.

I put the marker to the paper, paused, and then started writing. A list of facts on one side and conclusions on the other, and afterward, a star for positive and a frowning face for things that were definitely, absolutely negative.

First point: I had Saraya Post in my possession. Conclusions: Yes, I’d probably saved her life. No, I couldn’t really have left her sitting there on the side of the road, just waiting for Devil or one of his crew to come find her. Doing that would have meant her death or a beating that might have scarred her for life. I’d done the right thing saving her. My conscience told me so.

Second point: I had Saraya Post in my possession. Devil’s girlfriend—maybe ex?—and the girl he’d spent years staking his claim on. Even if he’d now broken up with her, he’d obviously decided to keep her in the crew, and that meant that me having her here was going to look like I’d taken something that belonged to him. No, he wasn’t treating her like he valued her anymore, and he’d been actively putting her life in danger—repeatedly—but that wasn’t going to change the fact that it looked like I’d kidnapped his property.

Her standing up for what I’d done wouldn’t change anything, either, because I doubted he cared what she thought of any matter at this point.

Conclusion: Keeping her here was most likely going to mean war with Devil and his Steeds. I didn’t see any way around it. I’d taken something that belonged to him, and he’d react accordingly. There was precisely no way he could let that sort of action go unchallenged.

He’d always been too concerned with reputation, and I doubted that had gotten any better. He’d see this as the biggest insult known to man.

My mouth quirked at that, though, because the thought of keeping her just to insult him further—to rub his face in the fact that I had his girl on my property and didn’t mean to give her back...

The idea had merit.

And given some of the things he’d done to my people over the last couple of years, the bastard had it coming. And maybe in another life, in another situation, I would have done that.

But Saraya... Yeah, Saraya was going to make that one hard. Because I didn’t want to keep her against her will. I damn sure didn’t want to make her some sort of pawn in a game she hadn’t started herself.

I needed to know what she wanted to do.

Which brought me to point three: I had Saraya Post in my possession. And I didn’t want to keep her or give her back unless she wanted me to.

Look, I know how that sounds. I was the head of one of the most powerful MCs in the area, son of a Hell’s Angel who’d been killed defending his own president. Motorcycles and violence ran through my veins, and I would have split my own heart open to protect my club.

I would have done even more than that to protect certain members of the crew.

I wasn’t exactly a man inclined to soft or highly emotional thoughts, and I had never, not once in my life, considered letting someone else decide for me when it came to action I might take. It just wasn’t me. As the head of the club, it was my job to make the decisions that would serve the club. Take care of the people under its umbrella.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t let myself second-guess things. And I never, ever pushed my own responsibilities off on someone else.

So why the hell was I pushing this particular decision off on a little girl who was not only gravely wounded but also very, very afraid of what might happen to her?